Document management has become an extremely valuable tool for saving resources. Specifically, document management reduces the amount of money spent on paper and the amount of time spent organizing, updating, and sorting. Document management becomes even more important in industries where the production of documents is high because proper document management can bring down costs, save time, and save resources.
The automotive industry, building construction industry, and the like are typical examples of high document production industries in need of efficient document management. In the automotive industry a supplier often works side by side with the automobile manufacturer to ensure that the supplies and the parts provided comply with the remaining specifications of the manufactured vehicle. For instance, the supplier providing the parts for a fender works closely with the automobile manufacturer to assure that the fender is in compliance with adjoining parts such as the side panels or the front hood. Other associated parts may be provided by a different supplier thus making the collaborative process time consuming as representatives from different suppliers must know the specifications of adjoining parts to ensure that the part provided fits. In most instances, the parts are represented to the manufacturer by use of a diagram or drawing showing the dimensions of the parts and the interrelation between the proposed parts and remaining vehicle body. Thus, one part change can have an effect on various other vehicle parts and requires other suppliers to make changes to their part. These changes can also come due to the manufacturer's need or desire to make aesthetic changes or structural changes to support weight and load compliance to meet either federal regulations or the manufacturer's own standards. Thus, it is not uncommon that a part may be represented hundreds of times in various different drawings due to different changes that the manufacturer desires to make. This process can be exhaustive and wasteful, where hundreds of paper drawings are reviewed, produced, and then later discarded.
The flow of documents in such a process can also hinder industry production, especially when drawings for a manufactured part need to be delivered to a specific site so as to provide the workers with the necessary drawings to complete a project. Delivering such documents can be a very costly procedure as the documents tend to be drawn on large pieces of paper and there tends to be hundreds of documents showing various perspectives of the same part. In certain instances, the delivery cost is paid at a premium, such as when the documents need to be delivered overnight in order to meet production demands or to maintain a production schedule.
Furthermore, as natural resources begin to dwindle and as the collective conscious of global warming and environmental stewardship begins to take hold in society, it is preferable to provide a system whereby the reduction of document production can occur without hindering the collaborative design process between a supplier and a manufacturer. Accordingly, a system and method is hereby provided that can manage the production of documents while at the same time facilitate the collaborative process.
Currently, a designer prints the drawings and retrieves the drawings from the printer and then releases said drawings to the vendor. The designer then takes the drawings to the project manager and if the vendor is offsite will have to deliver the drawings to the offsite vendor location. The prints are then obtained offsite, and the offsite vendor will begin to identify and categorize the drawing by first placing a time date stamp on the drawing to make certain that the drawing's status within the process is identified. This process allows revisions to the drawing to be known and therefore helps ensure that manufacturers and suppliers do not rely upon outdated drawings when manufacturing a part. Usually these drawings require additional copies to be made and distributed to the various personnel associated with a design team. These drawings are then worked on by the various individuals and then brought together once more for a final review. One master copy of the drawing is then made to reflect the various changes. As easily seen, the current document management method and system creates potential for error, especially when a final document does not incorporate all of the designs made by various design personnel.
The delivery of drawings in high drawing production industries such as the automotive industry may include numerous steps. With reference to FIG. 4, a prior art method of drawing delivery in the automotive industry is shown. In the prior art, the automotive industry uses sixteen steps for drawing delivery. These steps were necessary to ensure the security of the drawings, track the drawings so as to verify the status of the drawing, disseminate the drawings to authorized personnel, and ensure that only authorized personnel made the changes. Accordingly, as shown in the prior art of FIG. 4, many checks were implemented and as a result the steps became numerous and encumbered the collaborative process. Furthermore, in many instances a part drawing is worked upon by different people in different locations, thus the part drawing needed to be provided to the different people and therefore the process consumed a lot of paper.
Furthermore, the drawings may be formatted in any one of a number of different applications. For instance, the drawings may be provided in CAD, CATIA, jpg, or the like. Thus, in order to view all of the drawings, the necessary viewing application is needed. This may be quite expensive as the cost of licensing such applications may be high. Furthermore, depending on the computer, loading all of the necessary applications may burden and slow the processing speed of the computers. Thus, it remains desirable to have a system that may view drawings in any format and allow users to make changes to those drawings.